Michael Marder | Vegetalising Intelligence

If there were more philosophers with an outlook capable of understanding the world with plants and botany in mind, as Michael Marder does, it is very likely that many of the problems our society faces would be fewer. An absolute reference for philosophy in its connection with nature, he has been proposing for years a new concept of our time with his theory of “plant thinking”.

In his lecture created for FLORA, Marder explores the fascinating concept of plant intelligence, along with the notion of extended and extensible plant cognition. Specifically, Marder hypothesises that the cognitive processes of plants are not enclosed within their bodies, but extend into the environment: plants modify the world around them.

As a result, a plant can no longer be considered an isolated organism easily distinguishable from its environment. With the help of plants, says Michael Marder, “we will redefine intelligence as an interface between organisms, as well as between the organism and its environment, and begin to see intelligence not as an exclusively human or computational property, but as the hallmark of coexistence and symbiotic organisation.